"I call you—I, Mirza the Emir. Thy time has come. Christ and Irene. Now!"
With the word the Count struck the Janissary fairly on the flat cap with his axe, bringing him to his knees. Almost simultaneously a heavy stone descended upon the dazed man from a higher part of the wall, and he rolled backward down the steep.
Constantine and Justiniani, with others, joined the Count, but too late. Of the fifty comrades composing Hassan's file, thirty mounted the rampart. Eighteen of them were slain in the bout. Corti raged like a lion; but up rushed the survivors of the next file—and the next—and the vantage-point was lost. The Genoese, seeing it, said:
"Your Majesty, let us retire."
"Is it time?"
"We must get a ditch between us and this new horde, or we are all dead men."
Then the Emperor shouted: "Back, every one! For love of Christ and Holy Church, back to the galley!"
The guns, machines, store of missiles, and space occupied by the battery were at once abandoned. Constantine and Corti went last, facing the foe, who warily paused to see what they had next to encounter.
The secondary defence to which the Greeks resorted consisted of the hulk brought up, as we have seen, by Count Corti, planted on its keel squarely in rear of the breach, and filled with stones. From the hulk, on right and left, wings of uncemented masonry extended to the main wall in form thus:
[Illustration]